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At what point does an orbital facility be come a Highport?

infojunky

infojunky

SOC-14 1K
Peer of the Realm
Wandering through Grand Survey/Worldbuilders one finds that orbital facilities are pretty common, as are non-mainworld settlements.

Also note that there is the possibility of multiple Star Ports on a Mainworld as well.

But the central question is are things like a orbital fuel docks, cargo transfer stations and the like are considered "Ports" or are they just a extension of the ground port.

Note primarily this is about Class A,B,C ports...
 
Within the Third Imperium setting the general consensus is that the Starport represents the interstellar trade infrastructure that:
is usually under the direct purview of Imperial law
collects the taxes that are owed to the Imperium
is available to civilian use

There may be multiple facilities but only one Starport overall. There could be several highport docks and several groundside facilities too.

For insystem trade, resource extraction and manufacture the world government, corporations or even private individuals may build spaceports that handle such insystem concerns. Interstellar trade at such facilities is illegal (the Imperium wouldn't get their protection money)
 
There's two issues. One, is simply having orbital facilities that can support non-streamlined ships. But, second, is a matter of governance.

Who's running the facility? The government or a private party? Small airports here in the US tend to be private affairs, maintaining services for pilots, leasing hangar space, etc. Larger ones are mostly public, built with bonds and such, but tend to be owned and operated by regional authorities (cities, counties, rather than states).

But, something like a Highport in orbit could well be operated by the world government. However, with a balkanized world, there may well be separate Highports operated under different authorities.

I would think in any case, the Highport authority would be different from the ground services.

It makes sense that any world with a significant volume of traffic would have multiple terrestrial starports. It's simply a matter of scale. Similarly, even if the world only had a single starport, there would be several local, uh, "airports" (I dunno what you'd call them) to facilitate the transfer of goods. Goods arriving at the singular starport still needs to be moved from one part of the planet to another, and there's always value in scale of moving large amounts all at once, so those large ships would need to land somewhere. And the difference between a starport and a "airport" isn't that much -- big flat areas with cargo and passenger facilities, the only difference is official where a starport may have the extraplanetary customs office, and the "airport" (spaceport?) would not. And even then you can see it's likely better to have the ships just arrive within the proper quarter hemisphere of their eventual destination, than running all traffic through a single spot.

I'm curious once spaceships become as routine as they are in Traveller, whether there will be much demand for things like sea based transportation. I assume, but don't know, there might be some cost efficiency -- an ocean based liner on a T-shirt world has got to be cheaper to make than a fully enclosed, vacuum and space safe spaceship. But, similarly, if you make an airship, i.e. a cargo ship with lifters and an M-Drives rather than screws, but not designed to leave the atmosphere, even if it can still float (so they can take advantage of the free space made available by harbors), even if it just cruises 500 ft above sea level, it can move goods so much faster than a ocean going vessel to the point I think they would be novelties rather than required infrastructure.
 
Single starport, potentially multiple facilities administered.

They might start splitting if it's a geographical access issue, or traffic increases to the point they might separate by route and/or cargo/passenger.

There are some planets with multiple separate starports, which for Terra seems based on geography, and maybe on Capitol, purpose.
 
In point of fact, for xenophobic local cultures, I can easily envision circumstances in which a mainworld only has "spaceports" on its surface (downports) in multiple regions under local government control (an important distinction if Government: 7 balkanized world), but then has an extra territorial starport in orbit (highport only) in order to quarantine arrivals in order to prevent "contamination" of the mainworld by imports and tightly control customs enforcement so as to discourage smuggling.

These kinds of countermeasures against "foreign" imports into the star system would almost certainly be necessary for a TL=9 star faring species that doesn't have sufficient medical technology (yet) to prevent plagues and other medical disasters that could result from interstellar pathogens "hitchhiking" on inbound people and cargoes (hence the strict quarantine measures in orbit!). That way, if a plague gets imported, the starport can be sacrificed (and rebuilt, if necessary) while the mainworld escapes unscathed.

Such an arrangement (highport only, surface transfers require hiring local shuttle services) has all kinds of knock on effects when it comes to "border control" laws and enforcement. It's also the kind of thing that might be sustained even after technology has advanced far enough to make the Disaster Plague scenario a negligible risk. Although such "interstellar border protection" measures might have originally been necessary for medical reasons, the rationale for keeping them can evolve to include economic incumbent interests along with genetic and ideological "purity" tests, to keep "foreigners" (both people and ideas) "out" of circulation on a mainworld, for reasons various and sundry ... ranging from political to theological.



What I'm getting at here is the idea that there are different ways to handle the logistics of starport operations in any given star system. If the atmosphere of the mainworld is particularly hostile (A+) it makes even more sense for the starport extra territorial zone to be an orbital only highport type of installation, with any downport facilities being "beyond the line" of Imperial (interstellar) jurisdiction. That way, everything coming in and out of the system has to go through the starport in orbit (for customs, standards and import/export taxes, inspections, etc.) and then has to go through that whole process AGAIN for transfer "out of the starport zone" over the customs border to the mainworld's economy. It rather conveniently makes for an extra layer of border checks and law level enforcement.
 
I think a highport is distinguished from an orbital facility by offering all starport amenities in orbit: fuel, repair, and yards, along with craft berthing and warehousing; no ship need ever touch down. An orbital facility might offer many but not all starport amenities.

Traveller5 ties the presence of a highport to the starport class and world population, which implies a wide continuum of services and amenities exist. A class A starport has a highport if the main world is Pop 7+, for example. A Pop 6 main world with a Class A starport might have orbital facilities for fueling and berthing, but repair shops and yards are all dirtside. A Pop 1 main world with a Class A starport might have only a small transfer station for unstreamlined ships: you dock just long enough to offload people and payloads, which are shuttled to the world surface; the starport authority "parks" your unstreamlined ship in orbit where a service shuttle brings fuel and life support supplies.
 
I would say that there are two things necessary for it to be a high port, and a third might be present much of the time:

1. Ships of some size can dock to the port, and the port can handle ship's boats and other small craft.

2. There is some organized, regulated, controlled, means of moving between the high port and the surface of the planet.

3. This is the optional third, and an offshoot of the second: The high port serves as a government port of entry with immigration services at it.

High ports don't necessarily have to service ships, other than perhaps fuel. When they do fuel and little more they are more of a space going version of a truck stop and aren't a high port. On the other hand, they don't have to be a shipyard or repair service. That is, the high port may be more like a giant cargo and passenger terminal and little more. Fuel and services are available elsewhere in the system.

They do have to interface with the surface port or planet they orbit in some organized and regular way. That is, there is say a ferry service for passengers from the high port to the surface that runs say once an hour. Or there is a cargo transfer service you can use to get your goods to the surface after offloading on the high port.
The local government and / or the larger polity's government may be present on the high port and if you want to go from the 'international' section to the 'local' section of the port or to the surface, you have to go through some customs / immigration process to do so.
 
Spinward Flow said:
Sounds like the amenities of a type D starport to me ... :unsure:
Click to expand...
Not if an actual starport is available on the planet. The high port is a specialized cargo and passenger terminal to allow ships that can't land to unload and load but it doesn't function beyond that. There might a fueling station elsewhere that does just that.
 
@Spinward Flow, that is something in line with an idea I've been considering. A planet where starships are not permitted to land. Small craft are okay but most cargos are handled through the orbital port. Now put the players in the situation of having a cargo that had to be taken down. Complication is shortage of available craft, work stoppage by pilots or stevedores. It could be interesting.
 
Silverhawk said:
@Spinward Flow, that is something in line with an idea I've been considering. A planet where starships are not permitted to land. Small craft are okay but most cargos are handled through the orbital port. Now put the players in the situation of having a cargo that had to be taken down. Complication is shortage of available craft, work stoppage by pilots or stevedores. It could be interesting.
Click to expand...
You basically wind up with a "trade barrier" to the free flow of commercial goods (and presumably, passengers as well). Commerce still flows "just fine" (given time) ... but there is what amounts to a "trade friction" point when getting goods and passengers moved through the starport. In effect, you get a very "hard" trade border boundary between the local economy and the interstellar one, so as to keep the two segregated from each other. Very much the antithesis of free trade by enabling all kind of protectionist distortions favoring local producers over foreign imports.

I can can citef multiple examples of this kind of economic/political thinking in the real world, usually involving "walls" and a "fortress mentality" behind them, often with the notion of "exceptionalism" getting blended into the mix along with a variety of superiority complexes ... but I'm thinking that discussion of such topical matters belongs in The Pit (in multiple senses of the term :cautious:) mainly due to the motives of SELFISHNESS and GREED that are often times the animating forces behind such policy choices.



However, for the purposes of our discussion here around organization of starport logistics regarding surface to orbit transfers ... the main question comes down to whether or not a mainworld operates its trade on a "moat, drawbridge, portcullis, gatehouse to postern gate" basis in order to strictly control a customs border between a local market economy and the wider interstellar economy (to use castle fortification terminology).

And yes, that kind of "trade friction at the border" does introduce all kinds of ... complications ... to the smooth free flow of goods and passengers that can be incorporated into a variety of adventure hooks and scenarios.

One of the fun side effects of such a policy is that ocean water becomes "unavailable" for wilderness refueling (for example). :unsure:
At that point, a starship that wants "free fuel" either needs to transit to a gas giant to skim for it (which depending on orbital ephemera could take "too long" to be worth the effort, particularly with low power maneuver drives), assuming the star system even has a gas giant in it ... or ... starship operators are "obliged" to purchase fuel (unrefined minimum) from the highport, since transits to the surface are Not Permitted to interstellar craft.

For the locals, that one single Rule Change then allows them to effectively monetize and profit from SELLING OCEAN WATER to interstellar starships. Sure, if the stuff remains unrefined you can only sell that ocean water for Cr100 per ton brought up from surface to orbit ... but you can do that with an unarmed small craft (meaning minimal initial capital investment). The economics works out to something where the small craft can essentially "pay for itself" in just ocean water deliveries from a minority share of the Cr100 per ton earned by selling ocean water (unrefined) through the starport, simply due to the short distance and turn around times involved, leading to potentially large delivery volumes over time (we make it up in volume!) to meet the demand for fuel.

Extra bonus points for building a fuel refining operation at the highport to take those ocean water deliveries and turn them into refined fuel for starships that sells for Cr500 per ton at the starport!

Can you say CASH COW? :rolleyes:

And that entire money grab "goes away" if streamlined starships are permitted to water land on the ocean and wilderness refuel "for free" instead of paying for the privilege (and jobs) associated with forcing starships to buy fuel from the starport instead.



Like I said, there's all kinds of little knock on effects and details that nibble around the edges of a more xeno-antagonistic border policy with respect to starport operations, parricularly highports in orbit. And you had better believe that local government and laws will be funding COACC operations to prevent "interlopers" from bypassing starport security and the customs border in order to access the mainworld directly. 🧑‍✈️
 
Silverhawk said:
@Spinward Flow, that is something in line with an idea I've been considering. A planet where starships are not permitted to land. Small craft are okay but most cargos are handled through the orbital port. Now put the players in the situation of having a cargo that had to be taken down. Complication is shortage of available craft, work stoppage by pilots or stevedores. It could be interesting.
Click to expand...
I have something like that with this group:

Anubian Trade Coalition - Traveller

wiki.travellerrpg.com wiki.travellerrpg.com

They use high ports to control the population and movement of people as well as preventing smuggling. Direct landings are not possible on their worlds. Instead ships that are not controlled by them are required to park off the station and transfer goods to it utilizing their government sanctioned boats / barges.
Cargo and passengers are then screened on the high port before being allowed to continue down to the planet, again only in government controlled craft.

If workers tried a stoppage the government in this case would put it down violently as a worker revolt and likely replace the entire batch with new workers and the incident would be covered up.
 
Spinward Flow said:
Trust me. :sneaky:
Lithobraking is ALWAYS POSSIBLE ... 💥 ... given sufficient orbital velocity ... :eek:

Permitted? :rolleyes:
Permission is a different problem on the checklist ... 😅
Click to expand...
Okay, to parse that with a proverbial hair splitter, not permitted, are illegal, etc. I suppose if you want to run the risk, who knows, to include possibly being shot down by the military, or attacked by the same on the ground, or maybe the police show up in minutes, etc., go for it.

Of course, if you are smugglers and know that, you could take precautions like having a stealthy ship, know were defenses are, etc., to make the attempt as likely to succeed as possible...
 
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